Last Wool and Testament: A Haunted Yarn Shop Mystery (12 page)

“Up we go,” Granny said, and we climbed. We followed Granny’s wobbling beam of light, our steps hollow and stirring a layer of dust, and eventually came to another door. I tried turning the knob and couldn’t. Granny reached around me, turned it with ease, and we slipped out onto one of the tiny balconies of the courthouse cupola. A pigeon cooed in greeting and moved farther along the railing to make room.

“Just a quick look,” Granny said. “Then we’ll duck back inside before anyone but the pigeons knows we’re here.”

I’d never been so high up in Blue Plum. The rooftops and chimneys were a new world to explore. I could have hung over the railing listening to the pigeon and Granny all afternoon.

“See how the streets run?” Granny traced the grid of streets with her finger. “They’re the warp and the weft of Blue Plum’s tapestry and the buildings and houses are part of the story being told.”

“Is the pigeon part of the story?” I was sure the pigeon was watching us, waiting for the right answer.

“All the birds in Blue Plum. All the people and their cats and dogs and their cars and bicycles and gardens and everything else are part of the tapestry’s story. One of these years, when I’ve learned enough and have the right vision, I’ll start my own tapestry. It might be up to you to finish it, though, because I probably won’t be ready to start it until I’m about a hundred and three. Here, now. Hold my hand going down.”

“I’m not little anymore.”

“But I’m already old.”

She wasn’t such an old lady then, but she always got her way, even if getting it involved the misdirection sometimes necessary with children. I took her hand and
felt completely responsible for our safe passage back to earth.

Granny always got her way. She was always right. Two statements of fact, basically true. Although, of course, they were exaggerations. She wasn’t
always
right. She didn’t
always
get her way. But.

“Ma’am?”

I was still standing on the courthouse lawn looking up at Homer’s building. Probably slack-jawed and blank as my mind raced ahead without the rest of me. How did always being right and always getting her way fit with Granny no longer owning the house on Lavender Street? Had she wanted to sell it? Otherwise how had Emmett Cobb gotten it from her? If he
had
gotten it from her and if Max inherited it from him. And what was right about someone killing Emmett Cobb? But that couldn’t have had anything to do with Granny, even if she’d wanted her house back. And now she’d finally started weaving her Blue Plum tapestry and I wanted to see it.

“Ma’am? Are you all right? Whoa, there. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

If he hadn’t meant to scare me, he shouldn’t have snuck up on me from behind, or wherever he’d come from, and tapped me on the shoulder. Banging a couple of garbage can lids together as he’d approached would have been a better plan.

“Can I help you? I couldn’t help noticing you’ve been staring at that building and I wondered if you’re nervous. About seeing the lawyer?” He looked familiar, but I couldn’t place him. “Old Homer, he ain’t half bad, if you need one of them ass…one of them rascals.”

“Thank you. That’s good to know.”

“You looked worried or lost or something and I thought I’d do my good deed for the day by asking could I do anything for you.”

“Well, I hope all your good deeds are so simple. I’m
fine, just lost in memories. Thank you. It was very nice of you to stop.”

“All right, then, you have a good day, now.” He nodded, crossed the street, and climbed into the rust-spotted pickup, which was still running.

Son of a gun. The morning-polluting moron was also a knight in rust-spotted armor. I watched as he stuffed the earbuds back in his ears, his head picking up the rhythm. He gave the engine an extra rev to get the motley vehicle moving, lifted an index finger to me in the standard Blue Plum salute, and chugged off. I wondered if either the truck or driving it with earbuds was legal, but supposed it didn’t matter. He knew a good ass…rascal who could probably get him off.

A glance at the courthouse clock showed ten forty-five. Ardis wasn’t expecting me at the Weaver’s Cat much before noon. Thanks to Homer’s taking the meeting at the bank with Rachel Meeks, I had time to spare. I left the car parked in the lot behind the courthouse and took myself on a time warp walk of my own.

Homer had asked if I’d tried my key in the back door of Granny’s house. I hadn’t. I’d let emotion, the Spiveys, and the tuna casserole distract me. He also asked if it looked as though there had actually been a break-in. I hadn’t noticed anything when I drove up or when I looked for Maggie through the front window. But unless there was an obvious burglarlike mess left behind or a broken window, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to tell. I was willing to try, though.

And that’s what Deputy Clod Dunbar found me doing some fifteen minutes later.

Chapter 12

“P
olice. Hands where I can see them. Step away from the window, slowly. Well, wouldn’t you know it. It’s you.”

“Are you the only policeman in Blue Plum?”

“Feels like it lately.”

I turned around, hands still where he could see them, in case Deputy Clod felt jumpy as well as put upon. “I was just looking through the windows.”

“I could see what you were doing, Ms. Rutledge. Would you please put your hands down? I received a call asking about a break-in. Are you the only person mixed up in burglaries in Blue Plum?”

“Nice. Wait—you mean you’re just now getting around to investigating? I don’t believe this. Last night you took your sweet time looking around the whole Homeplace before dropping by the scene of the crime, and now you’re showing up, what, two, three days later to check out this one? For heaven’s sake, I’ve probably destroyed valuable evidence trying to get in the back door and tramping around looking in the windows.”

“As you say.”

Darn. I looked at my hands, at the soles of my shoes.

“Nah, you don’t need to worry.” He lifted his hat and massaged his scalp, then rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder and scrubbed his neck. “You probably didn’t
destroy anything useful. We investigated when the initial call came in. That’d be three days ago.”

“The day after Granny died. It seems more like a week ago. Or just a couple of minutes.”

“That’s the way it felt when…” he started to say, but the rest of his words turned into a yawn. “Pardon me,” he said, pulling his voice back out of the gaping depths. “I assure you, it isn’t the company.” From the smile disappearing into a second yawn, he judged himself either suave or witty. Considering he was armed and appeared dangerously sleep deprived, I didn’t roll my eyes. “I read through the report after it was filed,” he said. “There wasn’t much evidence to go on at the time. And then we had that gully washer yesterday. No, you didn’t likely trample anything worthwhile.”

“But someone really did break in?”

“That’s what Cobb reported, anyway.”

“I was kind of hoping it wasn’t true.” I turned back to the window and cupped my hands to the glass. There wasn’t anything obviously amiss. “How did they get in and what did they take? How did Cobb know?”

“He found a few drawers pulled out, a cupboard hanging open. Said it looked like someone was in a hurry or interrupted. No sign of forced entry.” Dunbar joined me at the window. His shoes were the size of monster trucks compared to mine. If there had been any evidence left after I waltzed through, his feet took care of obliterating it. “Wouldn’t win any prizes for housekeeping, would she?”

“Hey!”

“I’m just saying. Observation only. Not an indictment. But a room like that makes it hard to tell if anything’s been disturbed.”

“She would know if anything was disturbed.”

“No doubt,” he said mildly. “Shame she’s not here.”

That was the closest he’d come to offering sympathy about Granny’s death.

We were at the side of the house looking into the third bedroom, which she’d turned into another workroom. Her big floor loom lived in the front room, where there was enough space for it. In here, she kept her treasure, a piece of art. It was a tapestry loom my grandfather made from cherry and walnut with brass for the hardware. Somehow he kept his project a secret from Granny while he cut, smoothed, polished, and assembled the pieces. He gave it to her for their twenty-fifth anniversary, fixing a small brass plaque to the frame that read
MY DEAREST IVY
.

I could see five or six inches woven on the loom and a canvas pinned behind the warp—the cartoon—her painting of the design. From the angle the window gave me I couldn’t see clearly, but it had to be her Blue Plum tapestry. What did she say in her phone message?
It’s…well, it is what it is. A bit of a puzzle.
What did she mean? Something about it bothered her. Maybe Ardis knew. I was dying to get in there and take a good look at it.

The walls of the room were lined with shelves full of books and bins and baskets of wool. Beater combs, heddles, shed sticks, a couple of old raddles, and a spare batten hung from hooks she’d screwed in the ceiling. The dismantled parts to another loom crowded one corner. Someone found it in an attic earlier in the spring and left it on Granny’s front porch like a stray cat for her to take in. She called me, excited and sneezing.
Early nineteenth century, Kath. Looks like chestnut! It hasn’t been
touched in a hundred years and has all the dust to prove it.

If I could paint a picture of Granny, rather than the light in her blue eyes, the twist of silver hair on her neck, or the tilt of her head as she wondered what I was up to, I’d paint this room. Every inch of it looked like her. Like
home. And I was stuck outside, looking in through a window. And if the window were open, I would smell home, too. Lanolin and wool.

“I need to get in there.”

“Clutter,” Dunbar sniffed, turning from the window. “Well, it might be useful if you looked around and could tell us if anything is missing. If you can tell. Then maybe we’d have a chance of returning it to you. Whatever ‘it’ is. If we ever find it. Doubtful in cases like this.”

“Aren’t you Mr. Jolly Optimist. But wait, you said you read the report. You mean you didn’t write it? You aren’t the one who investigated?”

“One of my colleagues took the call. Contrary to your experience, Ms. Rutledge, I am not the only deputy in Blue Plum. Sometimes I’m allowed to go home and get some sleep. But I am here now. I hoped you might appreciate the personal attention.”

“Huh? Why? Don’t you trust your colleague to make a proper investigation?”

“Do you always jump to conclusions?”

“It saves time,” I said. “Can you get me in?”

“Not without breaking in myself.”

“I’m game. Please?”

“No.”

He was no fun. I kicked a clod of dirt and enjoyed the symbolism.

“Cobb’s due back in town tomorrow,” he said. “I can get you in then. In the meantime maybe you…”

“Cobb can get me in
then
,” I interrupted, not interested in his meantime. “I need to get in
now
because Max bloody Cobb already re-rented it and the new people are sitting like vultures waiting to move in. And I need to pack all this up and clear it out and for God’s sake where am I supposed to clear it all out to? It’s a lifetime accumulation of, of…It’s her whole life in there. I cannot, cannot,
cannot
believe this is happening.” I closed my
eyes and wrapped my arms around my head and wished everything, including Deputy Dolt, would go away.

“Jesus. Are you all right?”

Drat. He was still there. The rest of the world was still there, too, because my phone rang. I yanked it out of my shoulder bag, checking the caller ID as I walked away from Dunbar.

It was salvation in the form of Carol Mumford, my good friend and supervisor at the museum in Illinois. Excellent. With luck, it would be a short consultation, laying out a dilemma that only my preservation skills could solve, winding up with Carol expressing undying gratitude for my clear analysis and precise plan of action. Visions of crinolines in peril danced in my head, followed immediately by a less likely but more entertaining scenario.

“Carol, hi. Please tell me we’ve just received the pitiful but fascinating remains of a singed milking apron newly excavated from a building site in Chicago, complete with the hoofprints of the cow that trampled it into the muck, which saved it from burning up altogether. And tell me you need all my wits marshaled to preserve the darling apron and earn a great honking endowment for the museum from Mrs. O’Leary’s great-great-grandchildren. Really, you don’t know how important it is for me to hear something sane like that right now.”

By the time I was halfway through my plea, she was laughing so hard she was almost crying. Good. It always made me feel better to make her laugh. She wasn’t an easy mark, being the serious, fiscally responsible type she was burdened to be by both her nature and her job. Relieving that burden by making her laugh once a week was a goal I wrote into my private version of my official state-authorized job description.

“Carol, I’m serious. You would not believe what’s going on here. I need something, anything, to snap my
cognitive skills back together so I can deal with the incredible mess I have on my hands.”

It turned out she really was crying. I stopped blathering and listened.

“It’s not computing,” I finally said.

“I’m so sorry,” she said between sobs.

“Say it again without the sound effects.”

“You heard me the first time. I know you did. Don’t make me say it again. I’m so sorry. And I have to go now. I have to tell Laurie, too. And I know this is going to sound tactless, but with your grandmother dying, at least with the inheritance you’ve got something to fall back on, so thank God for that. Laurie’s got the children and that huge mortgage.”

“Right. You’re right. Listen, it’s not your fault. I know that. I’ve got to go, too. And, yeah, thank God Granny died. Solves everything.” I said the last two sentences aloud, but only after I disconnected. Carol didn’t deserve my crass comments. She was miserable enough already. I hadn’t said good-bye, but she was crying again and wouldn’t have heard.